


Always have been. Always will be.

by BucksomeBarnes (Freckled_Halos)



Series: the Assembled Avengers Initiative [17]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Dialogue Heavy, Fluff, Forehead Touching, Happy, Heart-to-Heart, M/M, Men Crying, Reminiscing, Shy Steve Rogers, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 10:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18134477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freckled_Halos/pseuds/BucksomeBarnes
Summary: Bucky has been Steve's muse for a very long time...and he's finally gotten back some proof to show it.





	Always have been. Always will be.

**Author's Note:**

> i've been in a Mood lately and just really wanted to write something disgustingly sweet and loving lol

"The truth is, I gave my heart away a long time ago. My whole heart. And I never really got it back."

(Sweet Home Alabama, 2002)

"My heart...it feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange...nothing but knowing you love me too. Just your heart in exchange for mine."

(Stardust, 2007)

 

\--

 

“What’s that?”

Steve jumped at the sound of Bucky’s voice behind him in the closet doorway. He froze, arms raised up to the top shelf, hands still on an old garment box.

“Nothing,” He lied, awkwardly lowering his arms and turning around.

Bucky was leaning against the open door, arms crossed with an amused look on his face. “Nothing, huh?”

Steve didn’t know why he was blushing, it really was nothing, but the surprise of getting caught off guard flustered him.

“You got some girly magazines in there, Rogers?” Bucky smirked playfully, sauntering closer.

“You just see right through me,” Steve teased as Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve’s waist.

Bucky hummed in response, before pressing forward, gently kissing Steve’s lips. “In that case,” he started, husky, “why don’t you come here and lemme show you what none of those dames could ever give ya.”

Steve flushed deeper and the pit of his stomach leapt. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes it was like Bucky slipped back in time, suddenly having his Brooklyn accent again and saying things like “keen” and “swell.” Steve never knew if it was on purpose or not and he didn’t ask, just relished in feeling like they were teenagers again, before their lives were so much more complicated.

“Alright, hotshot,” he whispered, warm breath ghosting across Bucky’s mouth. “You gonna put your money where your mouth is?”

“I’m gonna put _something_ where my mouth is,” Bucky replied, slipping a hand down to the crotch of Steve’s jeans.

Steve smiled involuntarily, wanting to make some kind of snarky response, but anything he might have thought to say disappeared as soon as Bucky pressed their lips together again.

\--

A few weeks later, Bucky was standing alone in the elevator, staring intently at a big priority postal envelope in his hands. “Do not bend” was printed on it in bold red letters. It was thick and addressed to Steve with a return label from Washington DC. Bucky couldn’t possibly think of what was inside.

He pressed his flesh thumb on their door lock, stepping into the apartment when it beeped open.

“Steve?” Bucky called, kicking his boots off. “You home?”

“Buck?” Steve answered, stepping out of their bedroom hallway into the kitchen where Bucky met him at the opposite side of the island.

“I ran into Happy downstairs,” Bucky started. “This just came for you.”

He handed the envelope over and the look in Steve’s eyes confused Bucky even more. “Oh my god,” he whispered. “I didn’t think…”

Steve continued to stare, not moving to open it at all.

“What is it?” Bucky asked quietly.

Clearing his throat, Steve turned back towards the bedroom. “I’ll let you know,” he mumbled before tightly closing the door behind him.

Bucky frowned. The envelope had felt too thick and uneven to be a letter, but he couldn’t think of what else it would be. If it was something from SHIELD headquarters in Washington, Fury would have sent it himself, not through the post. Bucky wasn’t worried, just painfully curious.

Later that night, Bucky quickly scanned their room before getting ready for bed, trying to see if the envelope was sitting out somewhere. It wasn’t. He walked into the bathroom and stood next to Steve, studying his reflection in the mirror.

“Everything alright?” Bucky asked, gently rubbing Steve’s back.

“Yeah,” Steve answered, pulling a long piece of floss out of the container. “Why?”

“You haven’t said much tonight,” Bucky replied, stepping over to his side of the counter to grab his toothbrush.

“Just thinking about stuff.” Steve looked over and pulled a small smile.

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Nah,” he shrugged, wrapping the ends of the floss around his fingers. “It’s okay.”

“Alright…” Bucky trailed off, unsatisfied.

Steve’s eyebrows pulled together the smallest amount at the tone of Bucky’s voice, but he didn’t reply.

\--

On a cold afternoon the following month, Bucky was napping dreamlessly on the couch in his and Steve’s apartment. His head was resting on one of the arms, feet lying in Steve’s lap at the opposite end. Stirring suddenly, Bucky’s eyes slowly blinked open. 

When Steve looked up from his sketchbook to Bucky’s face, he jumped the slightest bit.

“Oh,” he said. “You’re awake.”

“How long was I out?” Bucky asked dryly, rubbing at his eyes.

“About an hour,” Steve replied, flipping the cover of his sketchbook over and setting it and his pencil on the coffee table.

Bucky looked from the sketchpad to Steve. “What were you drawing?”

“Nothing,” Steve answered, breaking eye contact.

Bucky’s eyes narrowed as Steve gently played with a stray piece of string sticking off one of Bucky’s socks.

“Were you watching me?” Bucky asked, holding back a smile.

Steve gave Bucky an unamused look, but his ears still reddened.

“You creep,” Bucky teased, sliding his feet towards himself and sitting up. “Can I see it?”

Steve made a face. “I don’t know, I don’t like it as much...”

“As much as what?” Bucky asked, pulling his knees up and crossing his arms atop them.

Despite himself, Steve flushed even deeper and he let out a big sigh. “The others,” he smirked, looking into Bucky’s eyes.

“There are others?” Bucky asked, smiling. “Can I see those at least?”

Steve thought for a few moments before getting up and saying, “Hold on,” as he walked into their bedroom. He came out a few seconds later holding the Macy’s box Bucky had caught him with in their closet a few months ago. Steve settled back onto the sofa, putting the box on the coffee table. Bucky scooted closer to him, leaning against Steve’s side as he opened the box.

Inside, were a mishmash of papers. Various sizes, different tones, some ripped from other things. Bucky also noted the big mail envelope from DC in it too. Steve pulled out a pile clipped together, the topmost page a grinning side portrait of Sam. He pulled the paper clip off and set them in front of Bucky.

“These are mostly the team,” Steve said quietly as Bucky gently sifted through them.

Pulling out another bunch grouped together, Steve set those down and said, “These are mostly buildings and landscapes and stuff.”

Bucky looked through them all admiringly. He had always been impressed at Steve’s artistic talent, but didn’t get to see as much of it now as he had before the war. The dates on the pages, Bucky noticed, were anytime from 2011 to the present. The oldest ones were melancholy, a lot of big skyscrapers and cars, not very many of people, and often unfinished.

Steve watched as Bucky stared at one particular page.

“That was from right after I woke up,” Steve murmured, clasping his hands together.

“Is that…?”

“Mom’s old place? Yeah.” Bucky looked to Steve, eyebrows furrowed. “It was one of the first places I went once Fury let me out on my own. The neighborhood is ridiculously gentrified now, but that corner looked exactly the same and I realized that I don’t think I have any photos of it, so…” he gestured towards the paper.

Bucky smiled sadly. “God,” he started, letting out a heavy breath. “Just think about everything that happened there. Everything we went through…”

“I know,” Steve replied quietly, glancing at Bucky out of the corner of his eye. “Both good and bad.”

Bucky snorted out a dry laugh. “To put it lightly.”

Steve smiled as he watched Bucky carefully gather up the drawings and replace the paperclip. “What else you got in there?” He asked, clearing his throat and nodding towards the box.

Steve hesitated for a moment. Without picking it up, he slipped his fingers into the big envelope, pulling out yet another set of paperclipped drawings. He gently set them down in front of Bucky before putting his hands in his lap.

Bucky stared at them, even more taken aback than before. The sheets were brittle and yellowed, the lead a little smudged, ink a bit faded, but one thing that was very clear were the dates in the corners.

“How…? Where were these?” Bucky asked, breathy as he delicately looked through them.

“I called in a few favors with the Smithsonian and the Museums Counsel of New York. I knew exactly where I had stored everything outside of the SSR, but I wasn’t sure what had happened to any of it. They mailed me all of these a few weeks ago.”

Bucky continued going through the papers, stopping abruptly at a gorgeous portrait of Sarah Rogers, signed by Steve and dated January 1935.

They were both silent for a long time, lost in their own thoughts and memories until Bucky finally said, “It looks just like her.”

Steve nodded slowly, eyes glassy.

Bucky gazed at it for a few more seconds before gently placing it down with the others, re-paperclipping them.

“So what’s all that, then?” He asked, gesturing towards the box that still had a thick stack of paper in it, hidden underneath the big white envelope.

Steve flushed again before turning to face Bucky and smiling shyly.

“You.”

Bucky blinked a few times, his stomach fluttering. “Oh?”

Steve smiled wider and took out the last pile of drawings. “I’ve been trying to keep them in chronological order,” he said as Bucky anxiously flipped through them.

There were dozens. The ones on top were recent, Bucky lounging in their apartment or sitting in the common room, smiling, eyes lively. As they went back in time, Bucky frowned. There weren’t many of him straight on, mostly profiles or wide body shots. He looked so… _unwell_ in them.

Steve noticed Bucky’s expression and quietly said, “At first, I just wanted to know your face again, as well as I had before. As time went on, I realized that I was essentially creating a visual progression of your recovery. And of rebuilding our lives together. Then I just wanted to keep doing it, keep capturing all these small moments to look back on.”

“Steve…” Bucky didn’t know what to say. Not only was he touched at the sentiment, but it was startling to see himself through someone else’s eyes, particularly right after he was wiped. It was like looking at a ghost of himself. He still remembered how he felt at that time and consciously knew he had improved leaps and bounds since then, but looking at Steve’s view of him then versus now showed a more dramatic physical change than he would have expected.

“And…” Steve began, finally picking up the envelope, “there are all of these too.” He pulled out the final stack of old papers and cautiously held them out.

Bucky took them in hand as delicately as he could and tried to hide his surprise. They were all from before the war…and they were all of Bucky. Everything from an awkwardly proportioned drawing of him and Steve playing baseball from 1932 to a fully rendered scene of Bucky sitting on the Rogers’ sofa, reading a book in 1941.

Bucky kept leafing through them, reverently setting each one face down to the left of the stack, like pages in a book.

One was Bucky in Prospect Park, dozing under a tree dated 1936. One was him smiling wide, face forward, showing off his dimples, freckles, and slicked down hair from 1939. There were a few loose figure sketches from one of Bucky’s boxing matches in 1938.

He flipped that one over and set it down before freezing at the sight of the drawing underneath it.

Steve made a face somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “I hope whoever found them didn’t go through them all…”

Bucky stared at the sketch of himself laying comfortably in Steve’s small bed, naked and smirking at the viewer.

“That might’ve been a bit awkward,” he murmured, glancing at Steve from the sides of his eyes.

The next few pages were similar, a nude younger Bucky in the living room, one of him posing in the bathtub, another showing him leaning dramatically against the kitchen sink, gazing out the window above it.

“I remember this one,” Bucky whispered, equal parts amused and surprised. “It was freezing and you made me stand buck ass naked in the kitchen for an hour.”

Steve scoffed, grinning. “It wasn’t that long. And I didn’t _make_ you do anything.”

“Yeah, fine,” Bucky replied, smiling too. “You never—” He cut off suddenly, avoiding Steve’s stare and furrowing his brows.

“What?” Steve asked gently.

Bucky set the drawing down and looked up at Steve with kind eyes. “You never had to _make_ me do anything. Not when I was so head over heels for you. You could’ve told me you wanted the moon and I would’ve pulled it right out of the fucking sky.”

Steve stared intently at Bucky with an open expression on his face.

“And after all these years, after everything we’ve been through,” Bucky continued. “I’m somehow even more in love with you now than I was then. Can you believe that?”

Bucky barely got his last sentence out before Steve was lunging at him, wrapping his arms tightly around his neck and mashing their faces together. Bucky was startled for a few seconds before absolutely melting into Steve’s embrace. Letting out a long, contented sigh, he let Steve easily maneuver him back down onto the couch.

“Sometimes, I just can’t believe I have you back,” Steve whispered, resting his forehead against Bucky’s.

“I know,” he replied, quiet. “Sometimes I can’t believe I have me back too.”

Steve let out an amused breath before his face screwed up. “You’ve been through so much,” he began, their faces still pressed gently together. “And we’re still here. Together. How did that even happen?”

Laughing lightly, Bucky ran his hand through the short hairs on the back of Steve’s head. “You saved me, Steve,” he replied, impossibly quiet and painfully genuine.

Furrowing his eyebrows, Steve tried to think of how to respond. When he came up with nothing, Bucky pushed gently at his chest, prompting Steve to lean back enough to catch Bucky’s stare.

“HYRDA took everything I had.” Steve immediately grimaced, but Bucky held his gaze. “They stripped me raw, used me, manipulated me. And the only reason I could come back from it…is because of you.”

Steve looked confusingly at Bucky who had a surprisingly calm expression on his face.

“They used my entire body, forced me to do horrible things, scrambled and ruined my mind until I didn’t even know myself anymore, but there was one part of me they could never touch…my heart.” Eyes glassy, Bucky smiled shakily and continued, “Because I didn’t have it anymore. I had given it to you a long time ago. Before HYDRA, before the war, before the heartaches and the first ‘I love yous.’ You had my heart before I even realized it was missing.”

Steve’s throat tightened and he swallowed hard, trying to digest everything Bucky had just said.

Noting his pained expression, Bucky placed his hands on either side of Steve’s face, running his thumbs gently along his cheeks and smilingly sadly. “Thank you for holding onto it for all these years.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Steve tried to stop the first tear from falling, but it didn’t work. He felt Bucky lightly wipe it away before he pressed his lips to Steve’s, warm and full of feeling. Taking a deep breath, Steve kissed lovingly back. Their mouths moved together slowly and deliberately, hot breaths and soft sighs passing between them.

Pulling slightly away, Steve sniffled the tiniest bit, clearing his throat. “Thank you for trusting me with it,” he said, nearly inaudible.

Bucky gently nudged Steve’s face with his own, whispering back, “There’s no one else I ever would.”

Steve let out a trembling breath. “You’re my one and only, Buck.” He leaned back, looking Bucky earnestly in his eyes and giving him a wobbly smile. “Always have been. Always will be.”

A contented grin slowly spread on Bucky’s face. “It’s you and me, dollface.”

“’Til the end of the line,” Steve answered. “And for all the time after that.”

**Author's Note:**

> In my mind, bucky had always been the sappy, cheesy, mushy one between him and steve. and despite everything he's gone through, that part of him is finally starting to come back. In the way i've written them, bucky's the one who's had the grand monologues and declarations of love whereas steve is more action-oriented about it (ie the drawings). I just enjoy characterizing them that way haha
> 
> oh and please don't take this as discounting shuri's role in healing bucky. i haven't addressed it in this series, but i do still consider that canon. i just wanted to be grossly romantic for a minute, alright?
> 
> also, sweet home alabama and stardust are two of my favorite movies EVER and are wonderful and ripe for AU pickings


End file.
